How to play Final Fantasy VII Remake on macOS with CrossOver 26

With CrossOver 26.0, and the continual updates to D3DMetal (GPTK), a lot of DX 11 and DX 12 games have been able to just run. My friends have all asked me to check out Final Fantasy VII Remake and I finally caved in as it was on sale on Steam. Good news: with CrossOver 26.0, it’s not only possible, but runs extremely well on Apple Silicon.

Crossover 26

CodeWeaver’s Crossover is the secret sauce that translates Windows applications, or games, to run on your Mac. CrossOver 26.0 in its preview version includes the latest D3DMetal and DXMT libraries which makes all of this works really well. The Preview version also supports DLSS which makes running latest AAA games well on a Mac.

This will cost you about $74 usually. Sometimes there are promos like Black Friday, etc so you might be able to snag it cheaper. Once you purchased and installed CrossOver, you’re ready to start.

How to install Final Fantasy VII Remake Intergrade on macOS using CrossOver

You would have to purchase it from Steam. As for me, I purchased the game on Steam. That means on CrossOver 26.0 you will need to install Steam first, then the game from Steam.

1. Install Steam on a new bottle

You will see a few pop-ups to install Visual C++ and Windows fonts which are required for Steam to run. Go ahead click the necessary buttons to install them.

Once installed, I would uncheck Run Steam so that the bottle would complete its setup on CrossOver 25.0.

At this point, you should be able to open up and log in to Steam. As for the CrossOver settings, I set it to be D3DMetal, MSync and High Resolution Mode turned on.

2. Install Final Fantasy VII Remake Intergrade from Steam

Go about logging in to the Steam app and install Final Fantasy VII Remake Intergrade as you would normally do. The game will download and install as you’d expect. Once done, don’t start the game yet. I would recommend adding a couple of mods, or rather, engine fixes. The game has very bad implementation of VSync and the screen tearing on my Mac was very bad on my 60 Hz Dell Ultrasharp monitor.

3. Fixing the screen tearing issue

There are two mods you need to download from Nexusmods. First is the FFVIIHook mod that allows the game to utilise custom Engine.ini configurations. The second is a set of tweaks from the Ultimate Engine Tweaks which improve a bunch of game engine settings which optimises the game a lot.

Here are the steps to install these mods.

A. Installing the FFVIIHook mod

Firstly, navigate to the Final Fantasy VII Remake game installation folder on Steam. It would be in '/Users/<username>/Library/Application Support/CrossOver/Bottles/FF VII Remake/drive_c/Program Files (x86)/Steam/steamapps/common/FINAL FANTASY VII REMAKE/End/Binaries/Win64'

You can also just Open C: Drive from the bottle in Crossover and navigate your way there.

1. Extract the FFVIIHook mod.
2. Rename the xinput1_3.dll file to dxgi.dll as it causes gamepad issues.
3. Copy dxgi.dll over to the game installation folder where ff7remake.exe is.

B. Installing and editing the Ultimate Engine Tweak

Next, go to the save game folder for the game. That is where you need to create and add the Engine.ini file.

1. Go to ‘/Users/<username>/Documents/My Games/FINAL FANTASY VII REMAKE/Saved/Config'.
2. Create a new folder named WindowsNoEditor if it’s not already there.
3. Extract the Ultimate Engine Tweaks and copy the Engine.ini file to the WindowsNoEditor folder.

Open and edit Engine.ini file. Add the following files to the file at the top.

[SystemSettings]
r.VSync=1

C. Adding the dxgi.dll override on CrossOver

On the Final Fantasy VII Steam bottle, go to Wine Configurations → Libraries and add dxgi to override it.

Now, you are ready to play the game. This fix does not completely remove the screen tearing from my experience. However, it did manage to reduce it significantly. You might have to experiment with the game’s fps settings to see which works better. For me, setting a higher fps cap of 120 fps worked best.

Here’s a video of this whole screen tearing fix if you prefer a video walkthrough.

Updated! Screen tearing fix for Final Fantasy VII Remake Intergrade on CrossOver 26 + macOS

Watch this video on YouTube.

How playable is Final Fantasy VII Remake Intergrade on macOS

My Setup

• Mac Studio M2 Max
• 12-core CPU, 38-core GPU
• 64 GB RAM
• MacOS 26.1 Tahoe

After a few quick test, I landed on the following settings for the game to run about 80+ FPS on my M2 Max Mac Studio.

Recommended Graphics Settings

• Graphic Preset: High
• Resolution: 1440p
• Framerate: 120 fps

Check out my video recording of the gameplay below.

Final Fantasy VII Remake Integrade on CrossOver 26: 15 mins gameplay

Watch this video on YouTube.

Hopefully you will enjoy Final Fantasy VII Remake Intergrade on your Mac too!

So, there you have it. On the M2 Max, Final Fantasy VII Remake Intergrade is quite playable. As long as you fix the screen tearing issue. I hope this post would show you that you can indeed enjoy the game even if you have only have a Mac 😀

Have you tried running other demanding games on your Mac? Drop a comment below with your experiences! And if this guide helped you, consider sharing it with other Mac gamers.

Here’s also some other Windows games I’ve played on my Mac that might interest you.

Windows Games Playable on Mac using CrossOver and Parallels Desktop

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